Bell was a strange, joyful baby with far too much energy and a terrifying habit of getting out of his crib. It was designed to be inescapable because of how easily he climbed out of the other two they had tried. Krista and Danny moved in together as a father-daughter relationship, so Danny could be a part of Bell's everyday life.
Krista was judged harshly enough already for having a child with a retired adventurer turned guard who stopped showing up after her pregnancy.
More not-so-nice things were said about her relationship with the farmer. It made Danny angry, but Krista didn't care what people said behind her back. She got much-needed help with the adorable baby and company she had been missing since her best friend moved away. She fell in love with the adventurer but he bailed on her upon being informed about her pregnancy.
Lexie's first words were Mama, but Bell was different again. He had been mainly babbling about one thing for weeks, and it was driving them mad.
"a-u-o." This became "na-u-o."
Repeating the babble resulted in giggles, handclaps, and cheers.
Slowly, they noticed that he still didn't respond to Bell, but most of the time, when they said "na-u-o," he paid attention.
One day, Krista tried something out after she laid down Bell for a nap. She pointed at him "Na-u-o?" He did his usual giggling routine.
She pointed to herself. "Mama." He kept a smile on his face. "Na-u-o?" She points at him. He cheered even more enthusiastically. Okay, "Na-u-o. Not today I guess."
She was about to leave before she heard the words that she had been waiting to hear. "Mama!" cheered Naruto. She turned back with tears in her eyes, ecstatic to finally hear those words leave his lips. "You're such a smart little boy, aren't you Na-u-o?"
As Na-u-o grew older, they learned that his full name was Naruto, but it had been adorable listening to Lexie play with her younger brother Na-u-o.
Naruto was strange, but they loved him with all of their hearts. He maintained his energy. He was racing around the house as soon as he could crawl, but he was unstoppable once he could walk and then run. Lexie had a fun time trying to keep up, but she always got tired out, unlike the stamina freak.
He also started doing strange movements, especially different shapes with his hands, which he explained as ninja training. They both turned to each other and shrugged it off as a Naruto thing. It was better than him bouncing off of the walls.
Things went down a little differently for Naruto. He remembered terror, cold and red, but then two people came out, and the terror slowly subsided. They looked briefly at the prison before rushing over to their son.
Kushina picked him up and took him into her arms. "Oh, my baby. I'm so sorry this wasn't supposed to happen. You almost died," she cried, tears streaming down her cheeks. Minato was hugging them both and doing the same.
Together, they walked up to inspect the seal. "It's perfect. There's no damage," said Minato. They looked in the cage and saw no sign of the Kyuubi anywhere.
"Is he still in there?" asked Minato.
"Yes, but he's so weak," replied Kushina.
They looked at each other and communicated their intentions silently for a few moments while they were processing things.
"I split the chakra so Naruto could better handle the strain, but it would make the Kyuubi recover very slowly. It could be safe to integrate the yin chakra while he's weakened," said Minato
Kushina backed up as far as she could in the tunnel system and placed Naruto there before returning to the bars of the Kyuubi's new prison.
Minato slowly approached the seal and released it cautiously at a snail's pace. Once it was nearly off, he could hear a weak growl coming from deep within the prison, but there was nothing after that. After removing the last part, he passed the sealing formula to Kushina in case things went wrong. He walked in and called upon the Shinigami once more.
He had nothing to lose, so maybe reversing his actions would summon the yin half. It might not work, or it could work at the cost of his remaining chakra. It was worth it if it was successful. Splitting the Kyuubi had been a desperate move on his behalf.
Only a Uzumaki could survive the sealing of the nine-tailed beast, so his newborn son was the only option, and an infant wouldn't be able to handle the full power of the Kyuubi's chakra. Kushina had been much older when she became the jinchuriki.
He attempted the Shinigami self-sacrifice technique, although he didn't expect it to work. To his shock, the Shinigami appeared, and a dazed-looking half of the nine-tails popped out of its stomach.
"Chh, not that I'm grateful or anything, please. That thing was giving me a tummy ache, thank you. This world is gross, please!" The shinigami spat out in a chibi voice and then disappeared, leaving two people happy but extremely confused.
Minato ran out of the cage before the Kyuubi could recover, and Kushina slammed the sealing formula back in place and activated it with her chakra.
They walked away to get Naruto and looked at each other. "What the fuck was that?" Kushina asked bluntly.
"How am I still here?" wondered Minato.
"I don't know," Kushina replied. They both remained puzzled and shocked to their core after that brief and incredibly strange encounter with the Shinigami. Their expressions lit up when they shifted their focus back to their son, and they both broke into wide smiles.
Minato picked him up this time and cradled him gently before Naruto started fading away slowly and becoming ghost-like.
He started panicking. "What is happening?" he asked desperately.
Kushina was a much better sensor than Minato, and she could feel her son's chakra still going strong. "I think he woke up, she said."
They looked at each other sadly and gave each other a brief kiss and a lingering hug. "Do you think we'll see him again?" Kushina asked softly.
"I don't think so," said Minato, affirming her depressing thoughts. They were designed to help deal with the Kyuubi if necessary. They were more like vivid memory constructs than real people.
"I suppose we'll fade away too after we run out of chakra," said Kushina sadly.
Minato leaned his head against hers. "Let's enjoy the time we have left together. It's more than we expected to have," said Minato.
To their surprise, they stayed around for hours and were stunned to see Naruto reappear within his mindscape.
"Is he sleeping?" asked Minato.
"I think so," Kushina replied.
"'How are we still here?" Minato wondered aloud.
Kushina picked her son up once more, and they each took turns holding him in case they never saw him again. Once more, after a few hours with his parents in his mindscape, he disappeared from their arms and faded away like an aging ghost, but he appeared right where he left them before too much time had passed.
His parents tried not to get their hopes up, but time after time, he reappeared. It was hard to tell without the sun to inform them of time passage, but after what was close to two days of this occurring, they cautiously celebrated the extra time they didn't expect to share with their baby boy. They both prayed for it to last forever.
Minato looked around at the murky cave, the maze of tunnels, and the slumbering chakra beast contained deep within his cage.
"We could really use a crib, couldn't we?" he mused.
"At least he doesn't have to eat, and we don't have to change diapers here. That would be a disaster," said Kushina. She smiled and she asked for her turn to hold him.
"I didn't even think about that. That would be disastrous," said Minato.
Every time Naruto slept, he was doted on by two loving, doting parents with nothing better to do than spoil him with time and affection.
Because it was how they were raised, they played little games to improve his eye's ability to focus, his reflexes, and his hand-eye coordination. Konoha was extremely militarized during their generation.
They often saw him wiggle when he was picked up. He wanted to be set down, and he always attempted to move by himself. Inevitably, he would fall over and start crying unless one of them stepped in to support him. With an attentive adoptive family on the physical plane of existence and the always-present spiritual attention of his birth parents, he was soon zooming around both worlds.
Babies spent more time sleeping than waking, so he spent more time with his parents than his adoptive family. His parents couldn't tell what was going on outside of the seal, and Naruto wasn't old enough to tell them. They could see that he seemed happy and healthy. That was enough for them, and they thanked Kami every day for the unexpected extra time that they got to spend with their child.
His parents didn't want to take away his first real word from his caregivers, so they taught him his name instead.
"Your name is Naruto. Na-Ru-To," said Kushina slowly.
"Gabshsa," Naruto replied confidently.
"That's right, my little prince, Naruto," replied his mother.
He picked up on his name pretty quickly, and soon it was all he was saying. The two looked at each other and exchanged wide, happy smiles.
After a couple months of this, Naruto popped into his mindscape and ran to his mother. "Mama," he cheered.
Kushina teared up immediately. "He must have learned it in the real world," she said. "Oh, I love you so much, Naruto," she cried out as she hugged him close to her chest.
She pointed him in the direction of Minato. "Can you say, Dada?" she asked her son.
"Dada!" Naruto said with enthusiasm. Both of their eyes widened, and it was now Minato's turn to tear up. "Our boy is so smart," bragged Kushina.
As Naruto grew older and learned to speak, his mouth was as active as his body. His grandpa started teaching him the basics of farming, and his parents began beginner ninja training.
It was mostly playing ninja, but when he got bored, they showed him stretches and strengthening exercises suitable for a toddler. They started training him as a baby since they showed him all the different ninja signs for his enjoyment. He tried to emulate them even before they started officially teaching him the hand seals.
He loved playing with everyone in his family, but he loved playing with his mom and dad the most. They were super powerful ninjas, and he wanted to be just as strong—no, stronger! He must do everything in his power to defeat them. "I've got you!" he yelled as he tackled his mom's legs.
Kushina screamed and fell to the ground dramatically. He giggled. They always let him win, but he was getting faster! One day, he would defeat them both for real! Both at the same time!
He was always getting into trouble with his adoptive family for running too far away in the fields. He knew they were scared for him, but he had his mom and dad to protect him, and he needed to train hard to beat them someday.
Nothing could stop him from "his important training," as he called it. Not punishment, guilt-tripping, or even tears stopped him from doing his running.
He felt terrible for upsetting his adoptive family, but he needed to get faster and build endurance to become a better ninja. The best ninja ever! When they asked him why he always ran so far away, he told them that running in the same place every time got too boring for him. He gave a remarkably sound and frustrating defence of his reasoning for a 5-year-old child.
Things were going to get much worse for the poor family. His parents started teaching him the Ninja Academy taijutsu and how to find and draw upon his chakra. He was staying still for minutes at a time, much to the surprise of everyone. He started wandering around with a leaf stuck to his forehead, and he scowled whenever it fell down. It was an odd expression to see from such a joyful child.
He added even more movements to his routine, now some form of martial arts. That was too much for his family to handle once again.
"Naruto… How exactly do you know martial arts?" asked her mother slowly, her curiosity too much to keep at bay for any longer. He had been at it for weeks. He wasn't just playing. It looked professional to her untrained eyes. Simple, yes, but far too structured to be improvisation.
"Martial what now," questioned Naruto, full of curiosity to learn something new.
"Err, your ninja training: what is this new method, and where did you learn it?" asked Krista.
"Oh," he said, stopping his movements briefly. "This is taijutsu, and my parents are teaching me."
"Naruto, your parents are dead; at least we think they are," Krista said gently.
"I know," replied Naruto, who returned to his taijutsu practice. He still had them with him all the time, so it wasn't the biggest deal.
"How exactly are your dead parents teaching you martial arts?" Danny said bluntly.
Naruto looked confused. He sighed and rubbed his forehead. "Martial arts means taijutsu kid." Naruto's eyes lit up in recognition.
"Well, they show me how to do it and then fix my form when I do it wrong," he said passionately.
"HOW?" Yelled out Krista before she could stop herself. "Are your parents ghosts? Do we have ghosts in this household?"
"I don't think so," replied Naruto. "If we do, they aren't Mom and Dad; they died in another world," he explained as if he were discussing the weather and not a different reality.
Frustration was setting in for the adults. Lexie was off to the side, happily playing with her doll. She was so lucky to still be so sweet and innocent. Nothing could affect her when she was with her favourite doll.
"Naruto, what does that mean, exactly?" questioned the frustrated Krista.
"What does what mean?" asked Naruto.
"Dying on another planet, your parents, knowing martial arts, everything! How do you know all of this stuff?" She asked him impatiently.
"My mom and dad came back to protect me from the demon," he said confidently.
Krista chose to ignore any mention of said demon for the time being. "How are you communicating with your parents?" she asked more gently this time.
"When I'm asleep," he replied.
"What do you mean by that? Do you have dreams with them?" she questioned.
Sometimes, but even when I'm not dreaming, I can always talk to them. They're in my head," he said happily.
"Where exactly do you talk with them?" she said carefully, placing a good deal of thought into her words.
"They call it my mindscape, but that's a long word, so I just say in my head," Naruto replied.
"That's impossible," stated his adoptive, flesh-and-blood mother. "Souls from Tenkai and Genkai can't communicate with one another," she elaborated.
"I know that, but they're from another world. It's different there," he said with a huff.
"What is this other world that you speak of?" asked Danny.
"The elemental nations! My parents are from the land of fire and the strongest ninja village: Konoha," proclaimed Naruto passionately.
The two adults exchanged glances. He genuinely believes everything that he's told us, the look conveyed.
"What are your parents like?" asked Krista.
"They are the strongest ninjas ever!" he proclaimed loudly. "My dad was Hokage, so that means he was the best ninja in the whole village. No, the whole country! He's tall and has spiky blonde hair like me, and he's super fast and strong!" he declared. He took a brief pause to catch his breath before continuing with his tangent. "My mom has red hair and uses awesome chains to fight people. And she's badass with a sword!"
"Do you know their names by any chance, Naruto?" asked Danny.
"Minato Namikaze and Kushina Uzumaki!" was the swift reply. "I'm going to be even stronger than them and become Hokage! Believe it!"
It took a couple days to process Naruto's absurd, but elaborate explanation. Further inquiries were all responded to with the same casual ease as their first line of questioning, and he knew far too much about them for it to be just a vivid imagination.
Eventually, the two adults came together and decided to accept that their adopted child was somehow communicating with his dead parents while he was asleep.
The kid has his parents in his brain. That explained some unexpected things about him, but it opened a dozen cans of worms.
"What should we do with them?" Krista asked Danny desperately. "He's 5 years old, and he trains like he's going to war," she said. "He said that children do fight in wars in that world!" she yelled.
Danny shrugged. "Nothing we can do, I'm pretty sure," he said frankly. "He's too stubborn to stop training and his parents were actual ninjas who fought in real wars at a young age. They're teaching him what they know, and what they know is war. To them, it's the same as me teaching him how to run a farm," he explained.
"That is such a massive difference," she replied desperately. "Those two are not at all the same thing! Farming is mostly safe. Warfare is not safe whatsoever!"
"I'm not saying I agree with it, but pretty much every tradesperson starts training their kids when they're still young to prepare them for life as a labourer," he explained.
"His parents were ninjas, so that's what they know, and that's what they're teaching him. It was probably impossible to refuse training him after he found out that his parents were super-powerful ninjas anyway. The kid is all energy, and he doesn't stop moving except when he's doing those weird chakra exercises, as he calls them," said Danny.
Krista let out a small groan. "That's probably true, no scratch that, it's definitely true," She palmed her forehead in exasperation. "I guess our little boy will grow up to be a ninja and not a farmer.
Danny agreed with her assessment. "He likes being out in nature, but he didn't have the patience to be happy doing the grunt work that was involved in farming."
Naruto had around 8 hours of direct contact with his parents every day and was free to use as much of that time as he wanted to learn how to become a shinobi, which was all of it.
Shadow fighting grew tedious, and he felt like he wasn't getting any stronger, so he convinced his adoptive grandpa to build him some training dummies. He loved them, but he also frequently destroyed them with his chakra-enhanced strength, which, even as a small child seemed every bit as potent as a blessing from the gods.
The dummies usually didn't even last a week. After the fifth dummy broke, his grandfather declared no more dummies. Find your own damn target. Naruto obliged him, and the trees of the surrounding forest became his new focus for his energy. "That poor forest will never be the same," joked Danny.
He asked his parents how they trained taijutsu if they didn't have a partner or dummy. "Well, mostly just shadow training, like you were. We also used logs to practice our strikes and grabs," his mother explained. "Logs, they're perfect," he cheered. "That's even better than the trees! Logs can move!"
When Naruto was 7, his parents began instructing him on his first jutsu: the bunshin jutsu, which creates illusional copies of the user and was intended to be used for distraction or to confuse an enemy.
It's not that useful, to be honest, no half-competent ninja will ever be fooled but it, but it's a simple technique to learn, and can still be useful for scouting, even for experienced ninjas.
"You have the leaf exercise almost perfected, so you should have enough chakra control to perform it," said Minato.
"The hand seals are ram, snake, and tiger. Try to visualize a copy of yourself beside you while attempting the technique. The seals focus your chakra for a specific jutsu, but visualization speeds up the learning process immensely," he explained.
It took him much longer to learn than his parents expected from his success in other areas. They reasoned that it was probably due to the Kyuubi's influence on his developing chakra coils.
He was introduced to the other basic techniques: the Henge Jutsu, and the Kawarimi Jutsu, and he had those mastered long before he ever produced his first passable clone attempt. It probably meant he had little aptitude for genjutsu, which didn't bother Naruto whatsoever. He wanted to shoot powerful elemental techniques and charge into battle with taijutsu, not confuse and distract his enemies with illusions. Illusions were boring. Being a ninja was supposed to be exciting!
He was a natural with Henge Jutsu. He could already alter his height and weight while using the technique, which his parents said was better than most Academy graduates could do. He loved terrorizing his adoptive family with it.
He was beginning to experiment with inanimate object transformations, which his parents explained was beyond most ninjas, but it was incredibly useful for subterfuge and trickery if mastered.
Kawarimi didn't come quite as easily, but being able to swap places was so much fun that it too was mastered in good time, far earlier than he would have learned it following the standard ninja academy curriculum. As soon as he could perform the technique, he tormented his family by swapping places with anything that caught his attention for too long.
The next jutsu that Naruto learned was the mighty Shunshin, a high-speed technique for movement in a straight line. It couldn't be used effectively in combat due to its predictability, and it was quite disorienting when chained together in close succession. His parents told him that only a Uchiha with a fully developed Sharingan could reliably make use of the Jutsu in battle.
He also learned another technique that was taught to him because he struggled with the basic clone technique, and had incredibly potent chakra for his age. The Kage bunshin Jutsu instantly became his favourite technique, and it came to him so naturally, that he produced a small army of physical clones less than an hour after being introduced to the technique.
His parents gently chastised him for being so reckless with a technique he had only just learned, and explained in detail what could go wrong in the future, especially with more dangerous techniques.
Naruto experienced a killer headache after the clones were dispelled simultaneously, so he vowed to be more careful in the future, which was enough to satisfy his parents. He was always saying that his nindo way was to never go back on his word after all.
Naruto's Shadow Clones quickly became the bane of his adoptive family's existence. He used the physical clones for anything and everything. He completed a month's worth of chores in a weekend with the help of dozens of clones, and he was doing almost all of the manual labour needed to maintain the farm.
Danny had never experienced life without manual labour and found himself searching for what to do with his time most days. His job had switched from lots of physical work to mainly ordering around a chaotic horde of playful, overly excitable copies of Naruto. The only labour that he still insisted on performing by himself was the small section of the farm that was visible from the road.
After he mastered the leaf-sticking chakra exercise, he was instructed about the next stage of training: the tree-walking exercise. He was beyond excited to get started.
Overcoming gravity was just about the coolest thing that he could imagine doing, and with the accelerated learning provided by an ample supply of stubborn, knuckle-headed clones with no regard for physical safety, or reasonable time limits on training, the technique was mastered in no time. Soon, he was terrorizing his beloved family by casually breaking the laws of physics in front of them as frequently as possible.
He hadn't learned to walk on water yet, and he wasn't sure which impossible exercise was cooler. Walking on water was amazing, but tree walking could be done on any reasonably flat surface. It allowed for the intense parkour that ninjas were known for to be possible in the first place.
He discovered his elemental nature after overloading a small slip of paper with his chakra. His parents explained to him that it required special chakra paper, but with no way to acquire such an item, he improvised. He forced chakra into hundreds of pieces of paper before he achieved success.
He was surrounded by hundreds of crumpled-up failed papers when he finally achieved success. This time, directing his chakra into the paper caused it to shred into pieces, which indicated a powerful wind affinity.
He was slightly disappointed he didn't have a lightning affinity, since he loved bolts of lightning. He trained his affinity for wind by attempting to cleanly slice a leaf in half with his chakra. It was much easier for him to overload the leaf and leave it in shreds than it was to slice it cleanly and evenly, due to his large chakra capacity.
He was determined to go through the exercise as quickly as possible and was frustrated by his lack of progress, despite his parents' assurance that he was improving faster than was expected of him. To Naruto, it was slow, challenging, and frustrating repetitive work that required stillness, which he usually avoided at all costs.
With ample abuse of his overdramatic clones, unenthusiastic clones, he managed to perform a clean cut through the middle of the leaf after around three months of diligent practice.
With the tedious work out of the way, he threw himself into learning the first elemental jutsu to join his arsenal. Wind Release: Great Breakthrough was a small, but powerful gust of wind directed by the breath that was strong enough to knock over trees if performed with enough chakra. That happened several times by mistake when he used too much chakra. He knocked down three healthy trees on their property before he learned to stop experimenting with his destructive techniques on their private land.
He found a nice clearing about an hour away from their farm in the wilderness that dominated the vast majority of land near their quiet village. It was surrounded by dense foliage on all sides and was very difficult to reach without the aid of tree-walking, so it was perfect for a ninja in training.
It quickly became his favourite place to spend his time. His well-meaning, concerned adoptive family couldn't tell him to stop training so hard if they never saw him while he was training. It was perfect for him. The more he trained in the area, the more evidence he left behind of his awesomeness and ninja prowess. The place was starting to look more like an active lumber yard than the quiet, peaceful clearing that it had been before he discovered the clearing.
His father assured him that wind was an incredibly powerful affinity to have, and quite rare in the land of fire. It was the most versatile affinity of the five elemental types, and it didn't rely on proper terrain or weather conditions to remain effective. The air was always present in the sky, and that wasn't going to change any time soon.
He could attempt to learn other chakra natures after getting a good grasp on his primary nature. He was partial to lightning, due to his fondness of thunderstorms, but fire might synergize with his wind and make him a more effective Shinobi.
Naruto's parents had no way of knowing how much time they had left as persistent entities in Naruto's mindscape. The method used to seal themselves was meant to be a one-time use, to assist in the containment of the Kyuubi should the seal ever weaken. The seal never weakened, and yet they were summoned regardless, and even using chakra to demonstrate techniques didn't seem to affect the time they had to help raise their son from beyond the grave.
Despite that, they knew their time together was temporary. No technique lasts forever, and even the sturdiest of seals need some care and attention after enough time. Minato and Kushina wanted to record as much information as possible before their time with their son came to an end. To do this, they would need paper and ink, which were sadly not naturally present in Naruto's mindscape.
After years and years of attempting to create physical objects in his mindscape, Naruto succeeded in creating something out of nothing. It was just a rock, and for quite some time, that's all that he was capable of materializing. After a couple months of diligent trial and error, he succeeded in recreating a copy of his living room.
Next, he created scrolls of paper for his parents to record their thoughts on. Creating the ink to mark the scrolls was much more challenging than supplying the paper, but with stubborn determination, he succeeded sometime after his 8th birthday. His parents were ecstatic and immediately began to fill countless scrolls with their knowledge for Naruto to read when their time with him was at an end
His parents began to fade from existence just before his 10th birthday with their company. They managed to survive long enough to celebrate the milestone year with their son before they completely faded out of existence.
"We love you more than anything in the world," Kushina told her sobbing child. "Everything that we know, stories from our homeworld, techniques, ninja history, philosophy, and our experiences, both good and bad, are recorded for you."
When his parents had become nearly entirely translucent, they knew it was their time to join their kin in the afterlife. "This is goodbye for now, from the both of us, my sweet child. We will be reunited in the spirit world some day, but first you need to live a long, happy, and successful life full of adventures," Kushina said with tears streaming down her face.
"Take care now, Naruto. Remember that we will always love you," said Minato gently. Just moments after their final words, the two phased completely out of existence and onto the afterlife.
Naruto was experiencing too many intense emotions to even cry and was in absolutely no mood to celebrate his upcoming birthday celebration. Slowly, he collected his faculties and forced himself to smile despite the pain he was feeling. He had been looking forward to this birthday for years; the least he could do was pretend to enjoy it. When you have no more tears left to cry, why not prioritize joy instead of wallowing in despair?